Pro Tools 11 Working With Digi002 - A Guide

Owners of both Digi002 and Digi002R were a little concerned when Avid put these in the “might work” list of approved interfaces. Anyway, Eric Johnson has taken the plunge with Pro Tools 11 and reports are postive; here is guide to how he got up and running! Thanks Eric, you’re a star.

In the hope it might be helpful to someone else, here is how I updated my Pro Tools system on Mac OS X Mountain Lion from Pro Tools 10 to Pro Tools 10.3.6 and Pro Tools 11. My Mac Pro is a 2008 8-core (dual 2.8GHz quad-core) ID 3,1 w/16GB RAM and a plethora of disk volumes, and my interface is a Digi/Avid 002 console. Neither my computer nor my interface are officially supported by Avid for Pro Tools 11, however they’re working. Of course I plan to replace both when I am able, but for now I’m thankful for the extended life I’m getting from my existing gear.

Before this upgrade, I was running Mac OS X 10.8.4, Pro Tools 10.3.5 and I was using the 002/003 Drivers 10.3 (aka v9.0r3 w/ updated installer).

I was fortunate to already have my Pro Tools 11 bundle license on my main iLok. I recently took advantage of the great deal on the Eleven Rack with Pro Tools which provided me with the free update to Pro Tools 11. I had received the iLok asset upon registration. I know that for many there was great frustration as it appears the Pace servers were once again inundated with the volume. The Eleven Rack is still in the box at this time, but I’m planning to put it into a portable rack.

I first ran the Pro Tools 10.3.6 installation. When that finished, I restarted the system. I’ll omit some of the requisite restarts in my blow-by-blow, but trust me, the process required more than a few restarts. Next, I mounted the Pro Tools 11 disk image and dragged the application to my applications folder (the new way to install). Next, I ran the update/installer for the AIR Creative Collection v11. I followed that with the all of the applicable plug-in installers from the Avid Plug-Ins 11 update. I copied the Pro Tools 11 Demo Session to my sessions volume and finally I ran the 002/003 Family Drivers v11.

After the final restart, I found that I had a listing for “Avid 002” along with “Avid CoreAudio Device” in my list of audio devices. I remounted the disk image for the 10.3 drivers, but there was no uninstall option. After a bit of research I found the instructions on Avid’s site to manually uninstall. After removing the Avid CoreAudio.plugin from /Library/Audio/Plug-ins/HAL and Avid CoreAudio Manager from /Applications/Avid/Pro Tools, I restarted one more time and found that everything was happy.

The first launch of Pro Tools 11 took a long time, but it eventually loaded and presented the Quick Start screen. As mentioned previously, my Mac Pro is not officially supported for Pro Tools 11. When I tried to play the Demo Session, I got a “not enough CPU” message. After disabling several instances of Vacuum from a few tracks, I was able to playback and move around the session. Contrary to earlier concerns, all of the control surface and interface functions of the 002 console are working. The eight CPU meters in the System Usage window all bounced around well below any limits. I have not yet had an opportunity to really determine exactly what caused the excess CPU demand that triggered the initial error.

I’ve opened other sessions and done some light work in the last 24 hours and thus far I’m very pleased. I have updated my Blue Cat Audio plug-ins and a few others to their new 64-bit AAX versions, but I have quite a few more that still need to be updated. That’s a work-in-progress.

I have been pleasantly surprised that, despite earlier predictions, I am able to use my aging Digi 002 and Mac Pro with the new 64-bit goodness and power of Pro Tools 11. I hope this post is helpful to other members of the community.